Stratigraphy & paleoenvironment team

Let our team be your team.

Our in-house Stratigraphy & Paleoenvironment team brings together a broad cultural diversity of experts, with a variety of expertise, and totaling many decades of experience, from our laboratory technicians who fine-tune process your raw rock samples, based on their specific lithology, to our biostratigraphers who use calcareous, siliceous, organic-walled and phosphatic microfossils and calcareous nannofossils to provide you with the best-quality data and highest-resolution dates and correlations for your wells.

Members of our team have many decades of rig experience between them, and our offshore crew is always up-to-date with all the required safety certifications. We are available 24/7 and 365 for well-site and office-based projects, including office-based, remote well-site microscopy. For any of your needs, just give us a call and tell us how we can help.

We are the team for you - from providing real-time age monitoring at well-site or via remote microscopy; lowering your drilling costs by assisting in picking TD or casing and coring points; helping to identify pressure transitions; biosteering and stratigraphic positioning in lateral wells; to integrating biostratigraphic, geochemical and lithological datasets into a sequence stratigraphic framework; providing paleoenvironmental interpretations; assessing legacy data and quality-controlling previous interpretations, or providing up-to-date reinterpretations; converting your old data into a format that integrates with your chosen software; and providing customised reports.

We also offer tailor-made short-courses in biostratigraphy and all the fossil groups. We keep abreast of current research, and engage in in-house studies in our down time and own time that keep us at the cutting edge of our disciplines. Several of us have active ties to academia and maintain a record of publishing in mainstream peer-reviewed journals (PDFs of our publications are available on request).

We pride ourselves on the high quality and replicability of our data. We stick to your deadlines. No project is too big or too small. We have an outstanding reputation in oil and gas circles – don’t take our word for it, ask around! – attested to by long-standing relationships with many of the largest hydrocarbon players in the industry.

Operations geology staff

Pat has two BScs, one in Mathematics/Biology (Stephen F. Austin State U., Nacogdoches, TX, 1974), the other in Geology (U. Houston, TX, 1981).

He has expertise in several areas, and broad technical knowledge, having worked in the petroleum industry for nearly 40 years. Currently, he specialises in providing geological services, and coordinating geological and sample preparation services, for drilling operations in the deep-water GoM and onshore US. He has technical evaluation skills, including wireline log analysis, seismic interpretation, mapping, performance and volumetric reserve assessment, and well test/deliverability analysis. Pat is one of the original members of the team, having joined in 2000. His previous experience covers carbonate thin-section petrography, to determine diagenesis, paleoenvironment and facies distribution for frontier areas. Among many other skills, he has proposed new prospects, evaluated and recommended exploration/exploitation opportunities in several international petroleum provinces for potential new business line investments, and has advised companies on acreage applications and negotiations for petroleum contracts and technical evaluation agreements.

Radiolaria & diatoms stratigraphy staff

Mohsen has a PhD in Geosciences (Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous Radiolaria Biostratigraphy of California Coast Ranges, U. Texas – Dallas, 2006), two MScs in Geosciences (Georgia State U., Atlanta, Georgia, 2001 and Tehran Azad U. and National Iranian Oil Company Tehran, Iran, 1994) and a BSc in Geosciences (Shahrood Azad University, Shahrood, Iran, 1991). He is bilingual in Farsi and English.

He specialises in Cretaceous through Neogene planktonic foraminifera, Carboniferous-Permian, Cretaceous and Cenozoic small and larger benthic foraminifera, and Mesozoic and Cenozoic radiolaria from cuttings and thin-sections. Mohsen has a broad experience in the geosciences in the US and Iran (having worked for the Geological Survey of Iran for eight years), including geological mapping, especially of complex areas such as ophiolites, sedimentary petrology, foraminifera and radiolaria. He has also constructed his own Mesozoic radiolarian biozonation scheme, calibrated with ammonite data. Since joining the team in 2013, he has been developing his acetic acid method for liberating microfossils from micritic limestone, which has improved fossil recovery from this difficult lithology. He has worked extensively on the GoM Paleogene through Neogene and has experience of the onshore Upper Cretaceous of Texas and Colorado, Eocene of Nicaragua, Jurassic through Paleogene of Belize and Neogene of Taiwan. He has also gained experience in well-site remote microscopy work.

Planktonic & benthic foraminifera stratigraphy staff

Crystal has a PhD in Geosciences (Paleobiogeographic Changes in Caribbean vs. Tropical Eastern Pacific Benthic Foraminifera Relative to Closure of the Central American Seaway, Florida International U., Miami, 2016), an MSc in Geology (Comparison and Differentiation in Fossil and Recent Specimens of the Melongenid Subgenus Rexmela in Florida, Florida Atlantic U., Boca Raton, 2009) and a BSc in Marine Science (Coastal Carolina U., SC, 2003).

Her expertise is in Cenozoic to Recent planktonic and benthic foraminifera of the GoM. Crystal had various research and teaching assistantships in between (post-)graduate studies and two years of being a well-site geologist, based in Austin TX, before joining the team in 2013. Since then, she has been working primarily on the Neogene and Paleogene biostratigraphy of the GoM and onshore sections.

Khalifa has a PhD in Micropaleontology (Paleoceanography and paleoenvironmental changes of the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary interval (94-93 Ma): The record of Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 in the central and eastern parts of the Western Interior Sea, U. Massachusetts - Amherst, 2014), an MSc in Earth Sciences (Foraminiferal biostratigraphy and paleoenvironments of the Cretaceous Colorado Group in southeastern and central Alberta, Canada, Carleton U., Ottawa, Canada, 2004) and a BSc in Geology (Al-Fateh U., Tripoli, Libya, 1993). He is bilingual in Arabic and English.

His expertise includes oceanic anoxic events, especially OAE2, and GoM Upper Cretaceous through Neogene planktonic and benthic foraminifera, their application to biostratigraphy, and paleoenvironmental and paleoceanographic interpretations. Khalifa has been a part of our team since 2012, before which he held graduate teaching and research assistantships at UMass, was a geology lecturer at Nasser Nations University, Libya and a geologist summer intern at AGIP, Libya. Since joining, he has expanded his experience through hot-shot, well-site and office projects, encompassing the onshore Texas Upper Cretaceous, GoM Paleogene (Wilcox), Neogene and Pleistocene, and offshore Kenya.

Mohsen has a PhD in Geosciences (Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous Radiolaria Biostratigraphy of California Coast Ranges, U. Texas – Dallas, 2006), two MScs in Geosciences (Georgia State U., Atlanta, Georgia, 2001 and Tehran Azad U. and National Iranian Oil Company Tehran, Iran, 1994) and a BSc in Geosciences (Shahrood Azad University, Shahrood, Iran, 1991). He is bilingual in Farsi and English.

He specialises in Cretaceous through Neogene planktonic foraminifera, Carboniferous-Permian, Cretaceous and Cenozoic small and larger benthic foraminifera, and Mesozoic and Cenozoic radiolaria from cuttings and thin-sections. Mohsen has a broad experience in the geosciences in the US and Iran (having worked for the Geological Survey of Iran for eight years), including geological mapping, especially of complex areas such as ophiolites, sedimentary petrology, foraminifera and radiolaria. He has also constructed his own Mesozoic radiolarian biozonation scheme, calibrated with ammonite data. Since joining the team in 2013, he has been developing his acetic acid method for liberating microfossils from micritic limestone, which has improved fossil recovery from this difficult lithology. He has worked extensively on the GoM Paleogene through Neogene and has experience of the onshore Upper Cretaceous of Texas and Colorado, Eocene of Nicaragua, Jurassic through Paleogene of Belize and Neogene of Taiwan. He has also gained experience in well-site remote microscopy work.

With over 36 years of experience as a foram biostratigrapher/micropaleontologist in the oil and gas industry, Mike has extensive expertise in foraminifera of the deep-water and shelf areas of the GoM, onshore Gulf Coast, and deep-water offshore west Africa, Brazil, Pakistan and China. He is co-author of the ABX scheme for the Paleogene and Neogene of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, the widely-used, standard biozonation for industrial biostratigraphy in the Gulf Coast and shallow- to deep-water GoM. Mike has worked on many biostratigraphic projects from inception (basin to prospect to lease acquisition) through the exploration-and-production operational and post-drill phase. He is particularly good at increasing biostratigraphic resolution in the deep-water Wilcox, through using local agglutinated foraminiferal faunas and abundance peaks.

Rusty has an MA in Geological Science (U. Texas - Austin, 1978) and a BA in Biology/Geology (Trinity U., San Antonio, Texas, 1975).

His expertise lies in Mesozoic-Cenozoic foraminifera biostratigraphy, with particular emphasis on the Cretaceous; carbonate biofacies evaluation of core, thin-sections and cuttings; and carbonate and clastic paleoenvironmental analysis. Rusty joined the team in 2011, bringing 20 years of hydrocarbon industry experience with him, mainly based in the GoM, offshore Australia and onshore Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. During that time, he developed a classification system for interpreting carbonate paleoenvironments by examination of cuttings.

Quantitative stratigraphy staff

Xiuju has a PhD in Geology (Late Quaternary climate history on the northeast Tibetan Plateau: Multi-proxy investigation of Lake Qinghai sediments, China, U. Minnesota - Twin Cities, 2011), an MSc in Physical Geography (Late Holocene climate change revealed by pollen records from lacustrine sediments in the Qaidam Basin, Lanzhou U., China, 2007) and a BSc in Geosciences (Climatic factors on tree-ring width in the arid/semi-arid area of western China, Lanzhou U., China, 2004). She is bilingual in Mandarin and English.

Her expertise is in advanced quantitative stratigraphic data analysis, and graphical display and integration of multiple datasets (chemostratigraphic, lithostratigraphic, biostratigraphic data) using standard software package ODM (Oilfield Data Manager). She has advanced computer skills in SigmaPlot, STATISTICA, Microsoft Office, and experience with Matlab, R, ArcGIS, AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator. Xiuju joined the team in 2013 and has since gained experience in quality-control and compilation, integration, interpretation and presentation of geological and geochemical data, including XRF, ICP-AES/MS (elemental composition), XRD (mineralogy), Leco TOC, LOI, Rock-Eval Pyrolysis/Oxidation, FTIR, Pyrolysis Fluorescence, ChromaStratigraphy® (rock colour), wireline-logs, gas-logs, well-path and biostratigraphy. She has experience in producing geochemical data, and has performed real-time, high-resolution, well-site, XRF-aided chemosteering during horizontal drilling. Xiuju also analyses FTIR and calibrates/QCs spectral results to mineralogy. She has further developed the application of statistical tools for chemostratigraphic analysis and is engaged in developing geochemical schemes in conventional and unconventional plays.

Palynology stratigraphy staff

Heidi has a BSc in Geology (Late Triassic Palynostratigraphy of the Northern Carnarvon Basin, U. Western Australia, Perth, 2001).

Her expertise lies in Mesozoic through Cenozoic palynology. She has 14 years of industrial experience covering diverse regions, including the Gulf of Thailand, Brazil, Angola, Nigeria, Australia, Greenland, the North Sea and Canada.

Tonya has a PhD in Mathematics and Natural Sciences (Palynology and palynofacies of the Upper Tertiary in Venezuela, U. Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1987), an MSc in Sedimentary Geology (Central U. of Venezuela [UCV], Caracas, Venezuela, 1983) and is a qualified Geological Engineer (UCV, Caracas, Venezuela, 1976). Tonya is bilingual in Spanish and English.

Her expertise encompasses Late Paleozoic spores and Mesozoic through Neogene pollen, spores, dinoflagellates, palynofacies, palynological organic matter and thermal maturation studies. Tonya has been working as manager and part of the biostratigraphy team since 2013, employing her previous experience of project and personnel competency assessment and stratigraphy team management in the oil and gas industry. She is also a Professor in the UCV Geology Department, teaching online courses in stratigraphy since 2002, and is involved in ongoing research on bio-, cyclo- and isotope stratigraphies. Already with extensive expertise in South American Mesozoic-Cenozoic sedimentology and biostratigraphy, since joining the team, she has expanded her experience to include several US onshore basins, including the Paleozoic of the Western Interior Seaway and Permian Basin, and also the Triassic-Jurassic of Kurdistan, Cretaceous through Neogene of Belize, and the Cretaceous of diverse areas, such as the South Atlantic and Oman.

Calcareous nannofossils stratigraphy staff

Dave has a PhD in Micropaleontology (Microevolution in Coccolithophores: examples from the Paleocene-Eocene, Rutgers U., NJ, 2013) and a BSc in Evolutionary Anthropology (Rutgers U., NJ, 2005). He is bilingual in English and Spanish.

His expertise covers the Paleogene (Wilcox) and Neogene nannofossil biostratigraphy of the deep-water GoM and west Africa, specialising in Paleocene and Eocene coccolithophore evolution and diversification. Before joining the group in 2014, Dave taught courses in Invertebrate Paleontology and Introductory Geology, and was a field geologist on the New Jersey Drilling Project (2011). He maintains a Visiting Professorship at Rutgers. Since joining, he has had extensive GoM experience in the Paleogene (Wilcox) through Pleistocene, working well-sites both offshore and also onshore using remote microscopy.

Eric has a PhD in Geology (Biostratigraphic studies based on calcareous nannofossils. Jurassic calcareous nannofossils of the South and North Tethys Margin (south margin: High Atlas, Morocco; north margin: Jura, Switzerland), U. Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1990), an MSc in Geology (Géologie de la nappe du Gurnigel entre Schwyberg et Hellstätt, nouvelles données sur la limite Crétacé-Tertiaire, U. Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1986) and a BSc in Geology (Neuchâtel College, Switzerland, 1979). He is bilingual in French and English.

Having been involved in the hydrocarbon industry for more than 25 years, his nannofossil expertise is broad and virtually global, covering the Mesozoic through Cenozoic. Eric has been part of the team since 2010 and is now based in Switzerland. He has specific experience, offshore and onshore, in the GoM, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad, the US (Georgia), Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Canada, Angola, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Turkey, Romania, the Mediterranean Sea, Asia, the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. His current research interests include revising the taxonomy and biostratigraphy of reticulofenestrids and Miocene discoasters, defining the Oligocene/Miocene boundary in the GoM, and the astronomical calibration of Miocene nannofossil datums.

Fabio has a PhD in Earth Sciences (Calcareous nannofossil revised biostratigraphy of the latest Albian – earliest Campanian time interval, U. Milan, Italy) and an MSc in Geological Sciences (Geological surveys and biostratigraphic analyses of Plio-Pleistocene sequences in the Furnari and Rometta areas (NE Sicily, Italy), U. Palermo, Italy). He is trilingual in Italian, French and English.

His expertise is in Upper Cretaceous nannofossils of western Europe, and the GoM Cenozoic. Since joining the team in 2014, and being located in our Surrey, UK office, Fabio has gained extensive offshore experience in the GoM and offshore Trinidad. He has also been trained in laboratory procedures for core and plug preparation, core cleaning and core photography.

Richard has a PhD in Geology (Part A: Middle-Late Cretaceous and Neogene calcareous nannofossil biostratigraphy of the Papuan Basin, Papua New Guinea; Part B: Calcareous nannofossil biostratigraphy and sediment accumulation of turbidite sequences on the Madeira Abyssal Plain, U. Western Australia, Perth, 1998) and a BSc in Geology (Biostratigraphy and sedimentary facies of the Cenomanian-Turonian Ieru Formation, Ok Tedi region, Papuan Basin, New Guinea, U. Western Australia, Perth, 1991).

He has expertise in Upper Triassic to Recent nannofossils and is also experienced in interpreting Australian Mesozoic palynological data. Richard joined the team in 2015, and is based in Western Australia, but has dual Australian/US citizenship. He brings 10 years of hydrocarbon industry experience, having worked in both Australia and the US. He has extensive industrial experience of the Mesozoic of Australia and its margins, as well as the Mesozoic and Cenozoic of offshore Mauritania, Nigeria, Angola, Brazil, Canada and the GoM.

His expertise is in Cenozoic, Upper Cretaceous and Upper Jurassic nannofossils. Todd joined the team in 2015, bringing with him 12 years of industrial experience in the Mesozoic of the Paris Basin, Equatorial Guinea, US Western Interior, Texas, Scotian Shelf and Norwegian North Sea, the GoM Paleogene through Neogene, Nile Delta (Egypt) Oligocene, North Malay Basin Miocene and Uruguay Neogene.